Shovel Talk
by black.k.kat
Summary: Two people Owen wouldn't shag upon meeting in a bar, one he would, and one he'd spend forever with.


**Rating:** T

**Word count:** ~ 2,000

**Warnings: **Talk of sex, schmoopiness, light angst, fluff. (Slight Owen/everyone, if that bothers you, and background Jack/Ianto.)

**Disclaimer: **All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

**Summary:** *points to title*

**A/N: **Yay for **lilyrose225**, who saves me from mindless boredom at dress fittings! This is her prompt, in which I hopefully hit the high points that she wanted. Lily, I owe you my sanity. XD

* * *

_**Shovel Talk**_

_**(Or Two People Owen Wouldn't Shag, One He Would, and One He'd Spend Forever With)**_

Some people, when bored, play "Marry, Shag, or Cliff." Owen likes to look at his coworkers and try to decide which of them he'd take home if they met in a bar.

There's nothing in the autopsy bay, no alien corpses in need of dissection. Jack has banned him from the computers while Tosh runs some sensitive system-wide updates, and he's even out of paperwork to do. (Well, it's done, anyway; he likes to watch Ianto get all hot under the collar when it isn't turned in on time.) Owen is just cooling his heels at his desk until an alert comes in or their esteemed leader sends them home for the day.

But he's unutterably _bored_ with sitting around. He's gotten used to Torchwood's hectic pace and the weekly apocalypse, and has to wonder what it says about him, that he'd rather have someone trying to wipe out the human race than a few hours of no work.

With a clatter and a dramatic sweep of his coat, Jack strides past, headed for the Archives. For once, the Captain isn't actually looking for a quickie with the tea boy, who's at his own desk. Owen'd heard him shouting at UNIT on the phone earlier, though, so he's either going to get some sort of particle gun to wipe them out of existence (in which case Ianto will stop him. Probably.) or an item that they've requested.

Stifling a sigh—there's only so many half-murderous looks he can take from Gwen, who's obviously equally bored and not at all entertained by his fidgeting—Owen watches the Captain's ass disappear down the corridor. If they met in a bar, anonymously, and Owen had run out of other choices, he _might_ take him home and shag him. _Maybe_. The man's a bit of a queen, even just working, and Owen's not entirely sure that wouldn't put him completely off. The fact that he's male is nothing—Owen is an equal-opportunity kind of guy—but the attitude…

Owen winces a little bit. Yeah, no. The face is great, the smile is killer, but the fashion sense and dramatics and _emotionalism_ would send him running the other way.

A cell phone rings, and Gwen instantly lunges for hers. It's Rhys, judging by the way her face lights up, and Owen would snort if she weren't wearing her gun. Oh, yeah—the sweet and lightness of the team, who had cheated on her all-but-fiancé with barely a qualm, and would leap to do it again if Jack so much as hinted that he was interested.

In a bar, faced with the choice, Gwen would be last on his list, Owen thinks. She's so bloody _sincere_ about all the wrong things, trying to put herself above them all while just as dirty and broken. And she's not arrestingly pretty, not gorgeous in the way Jack is or sharply handsome like Ianto or beautiful like Tosh. Owen looks at her and thinks '_high maintenance_', and that's not what he wants from a shag he picks up in a bar.

And then there's Torchwood's resident butler. Owen turns his gaze—surreptitiously, of course, because the last thing he wants is to be caught staring and switched to decaf—to the tea boy. Ianto is tall and lean and utterly put together in his suits, with dark hair and light eyes and yeah, Owen would hit that in a flat minute. Ianto's the kind of pretty and self-possessed that makes one want to see what he'll look like after a few orgasms. It makes _Owen_ want to pin him down and fuck him until he comes apart, until he loses some of that bloody self-control and acts human. So far, the only time Owen's seem him like that was when his cyber girlfriend was trying to kill them all.

Somehow, though, Owen gets the impression that Ianto's not quite as amenable to the idea of a one-off as his thing with Jack makes him appear. There's an odd emotional vulnerability to him, a brittleness that doesn't make him any less appealing.

Owen's fairly certain that if they _did_ have a one-off, Ianto would be quite capable of keeping emotions out of it, though. It's a point in his favor.

There's a soft clatter of footsteps—those ridiculous boots that make her legs and ass look so good that people on the street do second takes, Owen knows without looking—and then a paper bag is set carefully in the center of his desk. He looks up into Tosh's slightly wary smile and feels something warm uncurl in his chest, even as he tries to fight it down.

Tosh…isn't the one-off type. Terrifyingly, Owen doesn't _want_ her to be. She's the kind of girl you take home to your parents and promise forever to. She wouldn't be out in a bar looking for a quick shag, and Owen would be horrified if she was.

Tosh is sweet, and gentle, and brilliant. She's nothing like Katie was, and she's possibly the first girl in whom that fact isn't a failing. But she's also far too good for acidic, cynical doctors who probably won't live much longer anyway, given Torchwood's turnover rate. It's a complete and utter cliché, and Owen is aware of this. It _aches_, burns in his chest whenever he catches her looking at him and she darts her eyes away. If they were together, those could be shared looks, intimate.

But they're not, so they aren't. They won't ever be. Because Owen is terrified that if they're together, Tosh will wake up from her crush and realize just what he's like, and will leave him.

Katie's already left him. Owen, bitterly, thinks that he couldn't stand it if anyone else he loved did the same, purposefully or not.

"Your favorite," Tosh says a little awkwardly, still standing in front of him. She's absolutely bloody gorgeous, even though she's wearing an old, ill-fitting jumper because the temperature suddenly plummeted. "I was in the shop anyway, so I figured…" She trails off, almost fidgeting but not quite, and the only thing Owen can think is, _'But you don't like that shop at all.'_

"Thanks," he manages to get out, because right now of all times he's finding it impossible to snap at her. "Pay you back later, yeah?"

Tosh's smile is always a surprise, so bright and warm even though she's normally so quiet and shy when they're not in mortal danger. It's not that she can't speak her mind, or even that she won't, but she tends to withhold things like that until she's entirely fed up or it's necessary.

"All right," she agrees, and hurries back to her computers.

It takes far more of Owen's control than it should not to watch her go.

There's a sharp sound as Ianto clears his throat from the edge of the corridor, and Owen has to rein in a wince. But Ianto says nothing, just beckons him over. Owen supposes that, knowing Ianto and Tosh's friendship, this was inevitable. He sighs and levers himself to his feet, grabbing an overdue report so it'll look like he's talking to the tea boy for a reason.

Ianto takes in the report with a slight tick of one eyebrow, then reaches out—lightning quick, which startled Owen because he always forgets that even Torchwood One's junior researchers have some combat training—to grab Owen's wrist.

"Tosh," he says in a low voice, blue eyes icy, "is one of the best people I've ever met. She spent months in a UNIT prison and can still see the good in everyone. She sees some good in _you_, Owen, though I'm not entirely sure how. So you are going to prove her right, go over, and ask her out to dinner. And if you break her heart, remember that I dispose of bodies _for a living_. But you will give her a chance anyway."

Then, with an absolutely chilling little half-smile, Ianto pull his hand back, takes the report, and heads down to the Archives as though shovel talks are just a normal, rather boring part of his day.

As far as shovel talks go, Owen has to say it's one of the best he's ever gotten. Especially since Ianto, the controlling bastard, tends to keep his nose out of other people's business until he simply can't stand it anymore. Apparently, Owen and Tosh's mutual pining has driven him to the edge. Owen would be proud, if he weren't so bloody unnerved.

Owen's still standing there when Ianto returns, looking black-faced as ever, but with a self-satisfied arch to one eyebrow. He walks calmly up the steps and vanishes into Jack's office. A heartbeat later, Jack himself hurtles by at a fast clip, bounding into the main area and heading for the stairs. Gwen perks up at the sight of him and half-rises from her desk.

"Jack—" she begins brightly.

"Sorry, Gwen, not now," Jack says, cutting her off. His eyes are firmly glued to Ianto's backside as the tea boy leans over his desk to collect some papers. In an instant, he's up the stairs, calling out, "All of you, go home. Good work today," before the office door shuts behind him with a resounding thud.

Well, that's sending Owen's brain to a lot of places he most definitely does not want it to go. Grimacing, he turns to collect his coat and keys, and then pauses.

Normally, anyone saying what Ianto did to him would just make him dig his heels in even more, and probably ensure that he _never_ did what he was being told to do. But…this is different. This is _Tosh_, and surely that's worth putting up with whatever smug looks Ianto will toss his way when it turns out that the tea boy does, indeed, know everything.

Owen's not even going to challenge him on that. He's found out the hard way that it's true.

Steeling himself with a deep breath, he looks at the sandwich on his desk from his favorite deli, at the Monty Python mug on the corner of his desk (from Tosh, though he'd never understood how she knew it was his favorite), and then up at the quiet tech shutting down her computers.

Deep breath, he reminds himself. Breathe.

"Tosh, want to go catch a film? The Electro's open in an hour."

She turns to him, startled and unsure, and he tries for a smile.

It must work, because he's never seen that level of pure happiness on her face outside of saving the world, and…

That makes him feel pretty damn good, actually.


End file.
